AIDS is obviously not a genetic disease– if one were to make a list of risk factors predisposing to HIV infection, genetics would be a pretty low-ranking member (though still present on the list, of course). Yet genetics is still a useful tool for understanding the disease, as evidenced by this paper: Understanding why some […]

I’m assuming that readers who know some neuroscience can make more sense of this paper, Monotonic Coding of Numerosity in Macaque Lateral Intraparietal Area (Neurons for Numerosity: As Quantities Increase, So Does the Neuronal Response, a summary for the general public). But this part of the abstract is what caught my eye: The responses of […]

RPM points to a post from Mark Lieberman at Language Log on the reporting of genome-wide association (GWA) studies. His request (for the popular press; these things are always in the actual paper): report the allele frequency of the associated allele in cases, as well as the frequency in controls. I’ve often argued that people […]

The Man Who is Thursday has a long post titled Christocentrists: Mormons as Non-Christians. His basic argument is that there are some necessary preconditions assumed with the term “Christian” which Mormons violate, and so though they are followers of Jesus Christ, who they believe is the Son of God, they should not be considered Christians. […]

The model of evolution that came out of the “Modern Synthesis” (see the figure on this site) predicts that evolution by natural selection occurs as a sort of stepwise optimization algorithm– that is, a population will approach some fitness “peak” in a series of small steps, rather than all at once. This sounds rather reasonable– […]

The first wave of genome-wide association studies has largely been confined to “big-name” diseases– things like diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer, etc. There’s a financial reason behind this, of course– funding agencies like the NIH are most interested in diseases of major public health import, as are companies like DeCode. But in the next few […]

Jonathan Pritchard has a new provisional paper, Adaptive evolution of conserved non-coding elements in mammals, in PLOS Genetics: Conserved non-coding elements (CNCs) are an abundant feature of vertebrate genomes. Some CNCs have been shown to act as cis-regulatory modules but the function of most CNCs remains unclear. To study the evolution of CNCs we have […]

I just got an email that The Elf has decided to take aim at Cosma Shalizi’s posts dismissing g & the heritability of IQ. Now, Cosma is an acquaintance of mine and we share some common interests, but here I hope the Elf and her kindred give him hell! Any GNXP readers with knowledge and […]

I’ve just self-published two books which might be of interest to a few people here. They mostly represent my literary side, one of them even being a book of poems I wrote 25+ years ago, but some might be interested in three sections of Substantific Marrow: “The Back Door of Europe” (on the Baltic-Black Sea […]

Here is an article by Steve Jones in today’s Daily Telegraph (the most ‘conservative’ of the quality daily newspapers in the UK). It is mainly about the application of evolutionary theory in engineering and medicine. Nothing very new, but may be useful as a reference.

I picked up a copy of Cerebrum 2007, a collection of essays related to neuroscience published by Dana Press. There were a couple good articles on stroke and pain (arguing that cancer patients have little danger of addiction even using infamous opioids like morphine), but I was disappointed by Henry Greely’s scaaarrry article about the […]

Greg Clark’s broadly Darwinian explanation for the Industrial Revolution, A Farewell to Alms, should be hitting bookstores in the next few weeks. As previously mentioned, Clark argues that in pre-Industrial Britain, the “survival of the richest” was the norm, and so today’s Brits are largely the descendants of past elites. He says this process created […]

Still not convinced? See below the fold for some (tame but NSFW) evidence that phenotypic evolution tends not to have to do with survival and reproduction. Data gathered from fieldwork in Brazil, Turkey, and Iran. Comparable data could not be found for blue-eyed, blonde-haired Finland. That probably doesn’t mean anything either. Labels: babes and hunks

You would think that the New York Times reporters on the education beat could write an article without blatantly proclaiming their gullibility or willingness to engage in obfuscation but I see no evidence of any desire to avoid such sins, especially in this article on how school districts are pursuing diversity agendas by parsing students […]

OK, is a picture worth a thousand words? I don’t know, but this photo is of a whippet with the condition p-ter talked about a few months back. We’ve addressed the possibility of this mutant in humans as well. The Daily Mail has more photos. Labels: Genetics

Not an April Fool hoax, but apparently an entirely serious story in the Guardian. Actually, one sighting of a chimp nibbling the carcass of a leopard doesn’t quite add up to ‘lion-eating’, but the facts as reported are impressive enough. Read it and make up your own mind.

At the risk of boring readers with two Finn-baiting posts in one day, let me add two more data-points to the post below on losers from Finland. Some of the readers may have already known that Finland has the highest per capita membership for MENSA, the club that only lets in those with an IQ […]

Another loser from Finland: Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki concludes his self-proclaimed “Loser’s Trilogy” with the thoroughly deadpan drama “Lights in the Dusk.” After “Drifting Clouds” and “The Man Without a Past,” which focused on joblessness and homelessness, respectively, “Lights” takes on loneliness, an affliction that plagues a none-too-bright Helsinki security guard named Koistinen (Janne Hyytiainen). […]

The UK Times today has an interview with Professor Simon Baron-Cohen on autism. Baron-Cohen is cautious about the supposed increase in the incidence of autism, and believes it could be largely due to ‘diagnostic practice’. Judging by the absurdly vague and loose criteria listed at the bottom of the article, I’m surprised anyone (except the […]

Jake & Kara @ Pure Pedantry have some interesting comments on the recent Ultimatum game & testosterone paper. Labels: Evolutionary Psychology